Becoming deaf and blind, which is what happened to my father.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Identity & self
Question
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Time & hindsight
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Collapse of the imagination.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, July 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →Failure, being caught out, making an idiot of myself.
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard
Developmental biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1995
I don’t think it’s misused yet, people are afraid of it might be misused but on the other hand, there is also value in finding out about the relation between several particular predispositions. You might be more careful if you are told that your genetic background is such that you shouldn’t eat fat in large amounts or so, it does help you change your life a little bit and so it’s not so bad, but it’s hard to find out which genetic background is causing these things.
Recorded
Marika Griehsel, Interview at the 53rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, 30 June–4 July 2003, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 July 2003
source ↗
Matthew Modine
American actor
Having a great fear.
More from Patti Smith
View profile →Clarity when I am writing.
I would love to have a better sense of physical balance.
Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned about doing good work and protect your work. […] Protect your work and if you build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.
Recorded
Christian Lund, Louisiana Literature festival, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 24 August 2012, Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 24 August 2012
source ↗
Tramping through the woods in South Jersey in 1957 with my dog Bambi.
The artist Gerhard Richter.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 243 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 195 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 158 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 111 answers
- What are you most proud of? 103 answers
Also answered this
Carrie Fisher, Eugene Levy, Judy Blume, Stephen Fry, Cory Taylor, Christopher Hitchens
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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